Personal consumer

In a depersonalized world it seems as if the only "personalization" we can get comes from advertised products and from technology. Customized cars, clothes fashion that "express your real individuality", software that "adapts to your needs", custom themes for our blogs, software for "tailoring every detail of your web site", customization of our social networking pages and so on.

But at the same time, less and less people have enough time and attention anymore to listen to each other in an empathic way. Human interaction is just another window in the attention deficit disordered multitasking craze.

Hey, but with products and custom software we can feel cared and understood again in our most intimate personality. The situationists ideas in Debord's 1968 book The Society of the Spectacle noted that in our commercial society we have to pay to get back our lost feelings. Little seems changed since then. Advertisers know very well which parts of the soul we are missing. First the consumerist society removes nature and human relationships from our life leaving us with holes in our soul desperate to be filled. Advertisers know that those holes won't ever be filled since what they propose as fillings is not the real thing and will just leave the consumer craving for more and more in the illusion of an ultimate satisfaction.

In 1965 Mike Jagger was singing "I can't get no satisfaction 'cause I try and I try and I try and I try", and we are all still trying… But wait… there's a new release of that blog technology, it has even a plug-in for showing my personal avatar. That’s really me isn’t it?